Rebecca Emms, aka TOVI, shares the story behind her song, “This Could Have Been a Love Song,” and the demo version recorded at the Banff Centre she’s sharing with DOMINIONATED patrons this month:
This is a demo of my song “This Could Have Been a Love Song”, which will be on my EP Hard Feelings (out April 9, 2021). I wrote and recorded this demo while participating in a three-week songwriting residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativity back in 2018.
Going into the residency, I hadn’t written anything for several months prior and this was the first song I wrote attending the residency. It felt like I reverted back to the headspace I was in when I first became really serious about songwriting when I was around 20 years old. I was really into bands like the Dead Weather and the Black Keys at the time, a modern take on blues-rock. I saw “…Love Song” as fitting into that feel.
I recorded this demo in the studio at the Banff Centre with Damian Wiseman from Chicago; he was doing a recording engineering practicum while I was there. I played bass and sang live off the floor with Kev Corbett (Halifax) on drums. Later that day Jaya Bremer (Victoria, BC) came into the studio and added some vocal harmonies to it. It just so happened that a few months later Damian, Kev, and I would all fly out to Victoria to play on Jaya’s solo record (Everybody’s Getting Married).
I loved the demo but it just didn’t fit with the sound I was currently working in. I ended up making an entirely different demo on Garageband; I moved the key up, slowed it down, and I had this idea to make it kind of 60s lounge pop-inspired with really muted bass and a Rhodes-esque synth sound.
When it was time to record Hard Feelings at Candle Recording in Toronto, I brought both demos to my producer, Josh Korody. We ended up mashing both demos together, drawing from the Banff demo for the chorus and bridge, and the Garageband demo for the verses. I hope you check out the final version of “This Could Have Been a Love Song” when it comes out on the EP and hear the difference between the two!
- Rebecca Emms
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